Tag Archives: Proust

Tamarind Time Machine

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tamarind tofu

I didn’t even have to squeeze anything out of a sock this time!

A lot of the time, my days in Cambodia feel very far away. Going through my old notebooks is like walking into a weird time portal, full of interviews with people I don’t remember (“Question: how long does it take you to paint a single tuk-tuk?”), odd to-do lists (“Find copy of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves for Savuth”) and discarded lyrics for a comedic folk song entitled “All My Linga Wants Is Your Yoni” (funnier than it sounds, I swear).

But with the publication of this cool anthology, which includes some of my Cambodian musings, I was looking for a way to pay homage to and feel reconnected with the Kingdom of Wonder. That’s when I went hunting through my notes for the recipe for Tofu with Tamarind, Chili and Basil. I scored it while writing a weekly column for The Phnom Penh Post called The Learning Curve in which I would try to learn traditional Khmer pursuits and then make fun of myself while I bumbled my way through them. Looking back, I see that I must have irritated a lot of busy people while researching this column, but they tended to be unfailingly good-natured about it, and Oeurm Pav at Arun Restaurant was no exception.

But would I be able to remember enough about interviewing her to recreate my favorite Khmer dish? It was a long time ago, my notes were sketchy, and even in optimal conditions, I’m lazy about measurements. However, I was able to purchase tamarind paste in an Indian grocery store in Queens, whereas in Cambodia, I had to boil the tamarind and squeeze it through one of Jason’s socks for lack of a cheesecloth. Perhaps giving undue weight to this head start, I decided that I could just intuit my way through the rest of it. Continue reading →

Garlic Green Bean: My Madeleine

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It took an energetic campaign to get Jason and our friend John to submit to the Panda Buffet in New London, Connecticut. On the drive back to NYC from a friend’s wedding, we had just passed through Rhode Island without glimpsing a single viable dining option (State motto: “Taco Bell? Fat chance!”), and I was quickly moving through the nausea-and-headache stage of hunger to one of open weeping, when we spied the Panda Buffet tucked unobtrusively next to a mattress store. After some pleading on my part, I was perusing all five of its bizarre food bars in a kind of transported bliss. Even though I would have settled for anything above a Pet Smart at that point, I was secretly delighted that we ended up at a Chinese buffet. Salvation, thy name is fortune cookie.

I understand that a buffet is not most people’s idea of paradise. Dwell on the all-you-can-eat concept for too long, and it will seem a little grotesque to even the most expansive eaters. It should come as no surprise that it was a 1940s American hotelier, Herb MacDonald, who took the little Swedish sideboard of cold fish known as the smorgasbord and raised it to the gargantuan, fixed-price spectacle we know today.  Who among us hasn’t fallen for its gluttonously seductive charms? Once, as a child, I ate so much at a buffet that I got sick at my aunt’s house later, and I can still remember the panicky look on her face when I woke her in the middle of the night, a look that said, “Good lord, my sister’s youngest child has killed herself with crab legs.”

But I maintain that my main attraction to the All-You-Can-Eat buffet has less to do with sheer quantity and more to do with the spectrum of choice. Continue reading →